The Atonement of Jesus Christ

Timothy Copple

Note: It is a good idea to read first the Bible study on Genesis 1-3 on Creation before reading this one.

In the article
on the creation and the fall, we saw how man was created in the image of God,
and in the likeness of God. We looked at how this was lost due to man's sin,
and the image of God in man was corrupted because it no longer showed the
likeness of God, but the likeness of His creation. Consequently, the goal of
God in our redemption is the restoration of this oneness with God, to have the
likeness of God, His energies enlivening us once again as it did Adam and Eve,
and to correct the corruption of His creation.

This
redemption and reuniting of man with God is why Jesus Christ came to earth, why
He was incarnate of the Virgin Mary and the Holy Spirit, why He went to the
cross and died, and was resurrected on the third day. The atonement centers
around what Christ was accomplishing on the cross specifically, but the rest
ties into it as well since it is one whole picture. However, one of the
stumbling blocks has always been why Jesus had to die to accomplish our
salvation. Why was this necessary in order to restore us to union with God as
we just stated.

It should be
noted here that it is significant as to what is being atoned for. The above
is the reality as it has been handed down to us in the Scriptures and the
teaching of the Church. However, in other traditions which attempt an
explanation of this, the problem is not a lack of union with God that is being
fixed, but something that God needs to extract from us which we don't have and so
all we have left to give is our lives, to die. Instead of being in death
because of losing the likeness, we are in death because we have a need to pay
God the Father back. The goal of atonement makes a big difference in the
understanding of how Jesus Christ brought this about on the cross.

Bishop Kallistos
Ware, in his little book, "How are we Saved," list 5 theories of the atonement.
One of these, "The teacher," is not seriously considered by anyone to be
complete even if there elements of it that are true, so we will not look at
that one. His last one, is what I would call the reality of the atonement's
goal, our union with God. It is that which in Orthodoxy is salvation. So we are
left with three other theories of the atonement: 1. Redemption, 2. Sacrifice/Substitution
and 3. Satisfaction. We will take a brief look at these three and how they fit
into an Orthodox understanding.

Redemption

In Rom. 6 we
get a picture that we are slaves to sin, which is death. We are able to overcome
this bondage by uniting ourselves to Christ in baptism. Because of this we are freed
from bondage and death, "For if we have been planted together in the likeness
of His death, certainly also we shall be of the resurrection." (Rom. 6:5)

There
are two way of redeeming something, either by buying it back, or by defeating
the one who holds it. Rom. 6:6 indicates which of these Christ accomplished on
the cross: ". . . knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the
body of sin might be rendered inactive." We also see this same concept in the
Old Testament examples of redemption, most obviously in how God redeemed Israel Egypt. He didn't
come in and buy them back from Pharaoh, God forcefully took them from him. They
were freed from bondage by force.

It is
this understanding that we have reflected in our Paschal troparia, that Christ
defeated death by death and on those in the tombs bestowed life. It was a
defeat of Satan who held us bound to death with our sins. Christ invades our
world and takes back what is His. St. Ireneus shows that this was the view of
the early Church:

For if man, who had been
created by God that he might live, after losing life, through being injured by
the serpent that had corrupted him, should not any more return to life, but
should be utterly [and for ever] abandoned to death, God would [in that case]
have been conquered, and the wickedness of the serpent would have prevailed
over the will of God. But inasmuch as God is invincible and long-suffering, He
did indeed show Himself to be long-suffering in the matter of the correction of
man and the probation of all, as I have already observed; and by means of the
second man did He bind the strong man, and spoiled his goods, and abolished
death, vivifying that man who had been in a state of death. For at the first
Adam became a vessel in his (Satan's) possession, whom he did also hold under
his power, that is, by bringing sin on him iniquitously, and under color of
immortality entailing death upon him. For, while promising that they should be
as gods, which was in no way possible for him to be, he wrought death in them:
wherefore he who had led man captive, was justly captured in his turn by God;
but man, who had been led captive, was loosed from the bonds of condemnation.

St. Ireneus,
"Against the Heresies," Book 3, Chp. 23.

In
this understanding, Christ defeats death in us with His life, uniting us to
Him, and overcoming Satan and death with His Life.

2. Sacrificial/Substitution

Here, the
"what" of atonement makes a big difference. Christ is considered the reality
which the Old Testament sacrifices point to. Christ did take our place in death
and defeat it, and thus He did substitute Himself in our place who were to die.
The whole sacrificial nature of Christ's death is clearly portrayed in Hebrews
9 and 10: "But He, having offered one sacrifice for sins in perpetuity, sat
down on the right of God." (Heb. 10:12). St. Peter also indicates this,
"knowing that ye were not ransomed with corruptible things, but with the
precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot." (1
Pet 1:18-19)

From the
liturgical material of the Church, we understand that the one Old Testament
sacrifice which points to the nature of Christ's purpose on the cross is the
Passover Lamb. The central celebration of Christ's resurrection is called "Pascha"
which is the transliteration of the Greek word for "Passover." It was this
sacrifice, the central sacrifice by which the Israelites were redeemed from Egypt, that
illustrates how Christ with His sacrifice redeems us from the bondage of Satan
and death. Death passes over those who have eaten Him and as St. John Chrysostom
so graphically says, smeared His blood on the doorpost of our mouth. Our
liturgical material on Pascha speaks frequently of Christ being the "New Pascha,"
in that we have been brought from death to life.

To that end,
all the sacrifices in the OT point even if they were for other purposes. They
also all were icons pointing to Christ's sacrifice on the cross, where His body
was broken and His blood was poured out that as St. John says in John 6, we
might eat His flesh and drink His blood. In His flesh and blood is true life.
To eat, He must be sacrificed and Satan is defeated.

3. Satisfaction

The above
reality that we have described to this point has been described with several
different analogies by the Fathers. Taken together, they can give us a complete
picture. The problem has arisen because some have taken one analogy and
attempted to make that describe the whole of atonement. However, because it can
only point to certain truths about the atonement, any attempt to do this will
inevitably result in false conclusions both about God and what needed to be
fixed for us to be "saved."

This is
essentially what Anselm did, who is known as the father of satisfaction
understanding of the atonement. His goal was to be able to explain to the
heathen in a logical fashion why Christ had to die for our sins, without using
the Bible or the Fathers. Doesn't mean he wasn't trying to stay within them, but
because of his methodology he does drift away substantially on some points. It
is known as the satisfaction theory because it indicates a need to satisfy a
lack that keeps us from salvation.

Essentially,
he took the concept of debt that we owe to God and made that into the whole of
the atonement. We do see the debt understanding even in the Bible, as the
servant who owed his master a lifetime plus of wages. Athanasius speaks of our
debt we owe as well, but not as Anselm ended up using it. Because of sin, we
owed God a debt due to our violation of His honor. This honor has to be repaid
somehow due to the nature of God. Man can't pay it, only God can pay it, so God
becomes man to not only pay what His due is to the Father through perfect
obedience, but goes beyond that to give what He didn't have to give, His life.
Since He didn't need this "merit," we can obtain that merit for paying our debt
to God off. The sacraments then become a means of distributing these merits, as
well as other good works. This is basically the Roman Catholic understanding.

The two major
problems with this understanding are these: 1. God's forgiveness is not
dependant upon repaying a debt, and 2. The debt we owe is not to the Father.
All we have to do to know that the first is not true is look in the Scriptures.
All through the Old Testament, before Christ's sacrifice, God is considered
merciful, slow to anger, forgiving all who come to Him. He is ready to cast our
sins as far as the east is from the west. The only requirement for forgiveness
offered in 2 Chron. 7:14 is "if my people who are called by my name, shall
humble themselves and pray, and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways."
Nothing is mentioned about atoning for a past debt before forgiveness of sins
can happen. Rather, God simply says: ". . . then will I hear from heaven, and will
forgive their sin and heal their land." In the New Testament we have the parable
mentioned earlier, where the servant who owes his master more money than he
could ever hope to repay is forgiven his entire debt without expectation of
repaying it. In the parable of the Prodigal Son, likewise the father takes the
son back, not asking that he restore the wealth he lost in sinful living.

Concerning the
second, we see as we have already noted that death is what is being defeated,
Satan is the one who we are in bondage to, not God. By placing God as the one
who is unwilling to forgive us our debt, it is He who we are in bondage to
death with, not Satan. This is attested to by the Fathers:

But since it was necessary also that the debt
owing from all should be paid again: for, as I have already said , it was owing
that all should die.

(St. Athanasius,
"Incarnation of the Word," Chp. 20)

. . . he means that the devil held possession of it,
the bond which God made for Adam, saying, "In the day thou eatest of the tree,
thou shalt die." (Genesis 2:17.) This bond then the devil held in his
possession. And Christ did not give it to us, but Himself tore it in two, the
action of one who remits joyfully.

(St. John Chrysostom,
6th homily on Colossians)

There is a
third key change in Anselm's view that makes a major shift from the view of the
Early Church,
indicated in the previous quote, and that is what is being atoned for.
In the first understanding it was the broken relationship with God, the Lack of His life giving
energies, lack of a union with. In Anselm's view, it is the debt of broken
honor with God that is the problem to solve and fix. The whole goal of Christ's
death and resurrection has moved from redeeming us from death and Satan by
defeating Him, to paying back God for the honor due Him that we cannot pay
ourselves. This was arrived at by deductive logic on Anselm's part by making
what should have been analogical the reality.

The Reformers
modified this a bit, but used the same principles as Anselm, and thus it has
the same problems. Instead of using the debt analogy, a juridical analogy
replaced it. Instead of a debt of God's honor, it is breaking God's Law.
Instead of owing a debt, we are guilty of Law breaking. Instead of Christ dying
to satisfy God's honor, He dies to satisfy God's justice. Instead of salvation
being the fulfilling of the debt, it becomes the declaring innocent of the
guilty due to Christ taking our punishment.

Still, God is
the one with a problem in that He cannot forgive us outright, but He must
punish someone to satisfy His justice. Christ is the only one who can take it
and not be defeated by it, and so He becomes man in order to take our place.
Salvation is still understood in terms of something other than a relational
oneness in Christ; a clearing of us from a legal problem. It still contradicts
the Bible which shows God the Father as forgiving many without needing to
punish someone for it. It is still based on premises about salvation and the
Father that are not evident in the Early Church or Scriptures.

Missing from
the satisfaction theory are the points we derive from another analogy used by
the Fathers and the Scriptures, that of healing. Actually, the Greek word used
for salvation is the same word translated as "heal." Context and theology
determines the translation choice. It basically is a word that means wholeness
or completeness. For Orthodoxy it indicates the fullness of how we were
created. We are sick, and need healing because of the corruption we are subject
to. In this picture, there is no owing or guilt directly involved, though it is
in the background of how we got here. Rather, there is a healing of our souls
going on. The analogy of debt and justice totally miss this whole context which
is much frequently used in the Fathers. Even the Eucharist is referred to as
the "medicine of immortality." That is why to get a complete picture, we need
to keep all the analogies before us.

These are
given us not only to understand what is salvation and how Christ chose to
accomplish that in Orthodox theology, but also to show the basis for the view
that many of us had as converts from Protestantism. We can see not only why
Protestants understand things the way they do in relation to salvation, buy why
Orthodox understanding is different. It is relational with God, not legal or
financial in nature. That changes the whole perspective in how we approach
salvation. It is not a one time deal, a declaring "not guilty," but a continuing
relationship with God. It is not a matter of works or faith, but a obedience to
God of love which draws us closer to Him. It is not a matter of paying back
something in full to God like a transaction, but a journey with Him into
wholeness as we were originally created. It is the journey that saves us as we
follow Him, taking His yoke upon us, carrying the cross we have been given. So
we with repentance and humility work to become more in union with Him as the
Church guides us.